Monday, 2 May 2011

Unholy Reverence

Following bin Laden's death, this article at ABC News outlines the Islamic rituals American forces performed before disposing of the jihadist mass murder's body:

Bin Laden's corpse was taken to Afghanistan to have his DNA tested for positive identification. The body was then flown to the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, officials told ABC News and he was buried at sea. The burial was done in accordance with Islamic law, officials said. A Muslim seaman conducted the process and said the prayers, with bin Laden's body wrapped in the "appropriate way."

Wait a minute...let me get my head around this. Did the United States military just kill the man responsible for the worst attack against its people in the nation's history, and then give him a sorrowful, dignified funeral in accordance with the laws of the ideology that drove him to commit that heinous act?

What is wrong with this picture?

And shouldn't the Muslim seaman who assisted with the burial have refused to perform an Islamic rite on such an obviously "un-Islamic" specimen?

According to ABC, this staggering display of dhimmitude was performed "so [as] not to inflame the Muslim world".

Isn't the "Muslim world" overwhelmingly peaceful, and doesn't it reject bin Laden as an anti-Islamic extremist? Am I missing something?

As it happens, the military got it wrong anyway - Sunni Islam's top authority, Cairo's Al Azhar University, condemned the sea burial as "sinful" and un-Islamic - indicating that they also seem to be affording an unusual amount of respect to bin Laden's carcass, considering that he was so un-Islamic and all.